This invention relates generally to high silicon-content resin composition that can be used to form thin film thermosets, useful in forming low k dielectric constant materials and as well as hard mask and underlayer materials with anti-reflective properties for the photolithography industry.
As the dimensions of microelectronic devices become smaller, the importance of fully exploiting the physical properties of the materials used in their manufacture becomes more essential. This is particularly true of the dielectric materials that are used to insulate metal lines, vias and electronic components from one another because of the contributions to capacitance that these materials make. Silicon dioxide has been employed within the industry as a dielectric material for the manufacture of devices for nearly three decades, but may become less suitable in the future because of its relatively high dielectric constant (k˜4.1). Recently, however, siloxanes have made inroads into microlithography fabrication with low dielectric constant insulating layers and pattern transfer hard masks that exhibit antireflective properties.
Additionally, in current conventional semiconductor manufacturing, in order to prevent light reflection from being transmitted through the photo-resist, reflected off the substrate and back into the photoresist, where it can interfere with incoming light and so result in the uneven exposure of the photoresist, conventionally one or more antireflective layers may be deposited before the photoresist is deposited or spun on. In the absence of an antireflection coating, interference of reflected and incident exposure radiation can cause standing wave effects that distort the uniformity of the radiation through the thickness of the photoresist layer. Variations in reflectivity throughout the entire imaged areas can cause undesirable line width variation for features which are designed to have similar dimensions.